For and against a return to the land | Letters

Richard Higgins (Letters, 15 February) writes: "Farming is about maintaining the land in such a way as to support the animals and people who live upon it". The late Tony King, professor of politics at Essex University, argued that all successful popular revolutions, good and bad, were accompanied by land reform and redistribution. One criticism of the EU levelled historically by the progressive, internationalist wing of the Labour party has been that the common agricultural policy encourages wasteful use of our common agricultural wealth. Max Weber, more than 100 years ago, showed that there was a relationship between the existence of large, capital-intensive farming estates and reliance on seasonal, immigrant labour.

When the inevitable leftwing reaction to this rightwing Brexit comes we would do well to consider how to reframe agriculture to involve a greater portion of the population and to ensure that a greater portion of our basic needs can be met at a local level rather than, as we seem to do at the moment, relying entirely on production for export and thus throwing ourselves open to the tempestuous nature of global commodity markets in the hope we can be saved by financial calculus alone.
Tom Muddiman
Southampton